


Sacrifices all around

by Hatsepsut



Series: Not Your Happy Ending [2]
Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Character Death, Depression, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:10:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3320255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hatsepsut/pseuds/Hatsepsut
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lyna Mahariel prepares herself to die; she has nothing else to live for.<br/>Zevran prepares to keep his oath to her; there is nothing else he can do.<br/>Alistair prepares himself to live with his choices; he doesn't know what he's given up yet.<br/>Sacrifices all around.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sacrifices all around

**Author's Note:**

> The first time I played DA:O it was with a Dalish elf, and of course I romanced Alistair. When he dumped my Warden I was shocked. No, no, I wasn’t shocked, I was heartbroken. I sat there looking at the screen, tears running down my face, screaming “WHY, ALISTAIR, WHY???  
> Yeah, laugh at me. But I know it happened to most of you as well.

She stood on the crest of the hill, feeling numb and frozen. Lifting a hand to the pale spring sun she wondered: was she now invisible to the rays of the sun? She felt cold, chilled, as if nothing could warm her.  Did even the sun reject her, recoiling from her like she was something disgusting, something that was suited to darkness and coldness alone?

A soft breeze of air, balmy and fragrant, blew past her, lifting her pitch black hair for just an instance, then letting it drop again.

For some ridiculous, illogical reason, she even saw that as rejection.

For so long now she had been soaring so high, carried to lofty heights, flying into space on invisible wings of false promises- only to be left to plummet to the ground. Helplessly watching the ground get closer and closer, she knew the fall would break her. And the man she had counted on to be there to catch her...had let her drop.

_Alistair. I loved you. And you let me fall._

Tears flooded in her eyes, but she stubbornly refused to let them trail down her face, blinking furiously. She was not good enough for the future King of Ferelden, a king she herself had put on the throne. She wasn’t good enough to stand by his side on account of her blood- it was elven, and it was tainted. It was infertile _._ Three strikes against her.

But she knew...she just knew. If he loved her, just a little, he could have fought for her. He could have done something, _anything_ , other than stand in front of her, bedazzling in that gilded armour, and tell her it was over.

She clenched her fists and her eyes closed; she was only good enough to fuck. It hadn’t mattered that she was an elf when she had given herself to him, her first, her only. It had never mattered when he’d come to her for comfort, when she’d carried the weight of all the difficult decisions for him. It’d never counted for anything that her ears were pointed; he’d still fed them the same lies that men gave women from the beginning of time _; I love you, I want us to be together forever, marry me after the Blight_.

Soaring on artificial winds, glued together by moonlight and rainbows. How naïve of her. How utterly stupid. She should have realised there was never any future for them when he’d told her he was a prince. She should have known and stepped back while her heart was still hers to command.

The silly little poor peasant girl might get Prince Charming at the end in fairytales; but this –her life- was not a fairytale. There would be no happily ever after for her.  

Tomorrow she would die.

She had been happy despite the constant fighting, despite the hardships. She had taken his offered promises of love and wallowed in them like a child in a warm shallow stream. A sad smile crossed her face- she had been happy. She had been happy. She had been. She had.

Once more she tried to convince herself that the pain was feeling now was worth it, because damn it, _damn it all to the Void_ , she had been happy, even for a little while, even if it didn’t last.

And tomorrow she would die.

She didn’t want to breathe her last mouthful of air a bitter woman, her heart charred by despair; she didn’t want to die this shell of a woman she had become. She wanted to die with the sun burnishing her green eyes to emerald, her smile blinding, her love still true, still alive.

 She didn’t want her last thoughts out of this world to be of betrayal and disappointment; Creators, she sought to remember the good times, the love and comfort, the silvery, sparkling pleasure of a soft touch on her flesh, the gentle thrill of a chaste kiss, the boyish smile that had made her heart stumble.

She would die tomorrow; she had given Ferelden a King, and in the process she had lost everything. Her life was all that was left of her to give; she would die for her liege. She would rather have died for the man she loved-but that man didn’t exist. That man had been a lie. That man had probably never loved her. That man had discarded her like used goods.  She would die for King Alistair Therein – but she had loved Ali, her Ali-bear, the flustered ex-templar, the lonely Chantry raised orphan. She had made her Ali a king, and now she was going to pay the price, by the Dread Wolf, she had already paid the price.

Creators, she didn’t want to die.

She didn’t want to live either.

With a sigh, she turned back and walked down the hill, the blond-haired elven shadow that had been trailing after her all these days just a few steps behind. Zevran had been there when Morrigan had made her offer; he had been there when she had rejected it. He had been there –a rock to lean on- when she had first realised she could now count the rest of her life in hours and minutes and seconds.

Zevran was always there. A deep well of pain that she couldn’t deal with, because in loving one man she had not only destroyed her own heart but broken another’s, as well.   

Tomorrow...tomorrow she would die. Alistair would live a live he dreaded, fulfil a role he despised. And Zevran had promised to help keep the man she loved safe.

Sacrifices all around.

* * *

She was dead. She was dead. Dead, dead, dead. The word repeated itself in his mind, until the syllables meant nothing, they were just jumbled sound, no import, no substance.

Like gibberish. Like a mind that had been shocked out of its senses, screeching as it rocked back and forth to console itself like a forlorn child. How could she be dead? How could her brilliant soul been snuffed out? Travesties like that didn't happen, no sane god would have allowed it.

His soul rebelled, his senses reeled. He needed to see for himself. He needed to make sure. She could not be gone. She couldn’t. _Maker, make her be alive_.

A new chant started in his mind, one of prayer and bargaining. _Maker, make her be alive, and I swear, I will do whatever you want. I will never think blasphemous thoughts again. I will never sin. Maker, I’ll even give up cheese._

That’s why he run, that’s why he stormed through the streets, pushing past rejoicing throngs of soldiers, bloodied and covered in gore, holding on to each other and crying like children being woken from a terrible nightmare to see that the sun had risen again, the monsters had retreated, life could once more begin.

The blond assassin was already there when he pushed through the crowds, climbed the countless stairs, reached the burned, charred corpse of the Archdemon. He had a tiny, broken form cradled in his arms, a hand smoothing down an alabaster cheek.

Anger rose to crash like a giant black wave. He had no right to touch his Warden. He had no right to touch his woman.

He jerked her body from the assassins arms, before he realised that was all that was left of her-her body. An empty, broken shell of the woman he loved.

Zevran twisted the knife.

“She said to tell you that she loved you, and that she wishes you happiness; may you find a suitable queen and spawn many little royal heirs,” the Antivan’s voice was cold, ruthless, vindictive, delivering his words as he would the crippling, well placed thrust of his daggers to a victim he might want to kill –but slowly, and painfully. “She told me to give you this,” he thrust something by Alistair’s feet, “And tell you that your ‘love’,” he spat the word with derision, “was just like it: something beautiful amongst all this death. Too bad it wilted. Too bad it was doomed from the start.”

Alistair was left there, staring at the brown, wilted corpse of the flower he had given her to show her his love, without really looking at it.

He threw his head back and howled his pain, just once, a long scream of fury, and pain and shame-it ended in a keening, whimpering cry and then the tears came.

He was still crying when they took her out of his arms, when someone led him down the stairs by the hand, too shocked and frozen by grief to acknowledge anyone.

The city, the country, the whole world celebrated for days; the Blight was over before it even had begun. One woman, a Dalish elf, had singlehandedly defeated it, pushed the accursed disease back, killed the big, bad monster.

But Alistair remained in his room, and the people closest to him had to hear his sobs, had to cringe and exchange worried looks when he had thrashed the room and wondered if his grief had maddened him when he ordered all the rose bushes in the city of Denerim to be pulled out.

But, eventually, life went on. He was now the King, and he could not stay in his room forever. He emerged one day, freshly washed and with a determined gleam in his eye, and set about to become the best King that Ferelden had ever had- just because she had believed he could, and he didn't want to let her down. Not again.

In the years to come, he did find a queen. He did sire two sons and a daughter. He did become the rightful, just ruler she had seen in him.

Ferelden had prospered.

But he never smiled again-not once. That boyish, clownish smile never again crossed his face.

And when the time came for him to go to his Calling, and for his eldest son, Duncan, to succeed him, the name he left behind was Alistair Therein, The Sad King.

 

 


End file.
